With its primary mission far behind, NASA's New Horizons is getting used to its new role as humanity's deep space emissary.

The probe buzzed Pluto and its system of moons on July 14, 2015, providing us with an unprecedented and stunning view of the dwarf planet. But with Pluto now millions of miles in New Horizons' rear view mirror, it's looking forward to another encounter, with a Kuiper Belt Object (KBO) called 2014 MU69, in 2019.

Along the way, however, the spacecraft isn't being idle, it's doing science and, as the only mission that has ever explored the Kuiper Belt, has made a second observation of a distant KBO called 1994 JR1, refining its position to a high precision.

Using its Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI), New Horizons in April imaged 1994 JR1 from a distance of around 69 million miles. This is the second time the mission has checked in on the 90 mile wide object; the first was in November 2015 when New Horizons was 170 million miles away. These are the closest ever astronomical images of a KBO.

"Combining the November 2015 and April 2016 observations allows us to pinpoint the location of JR1 to within 1,000 kilometers (about 600 miles), far better than any small KBO," said New Horizons science team member Simon Porter, of Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) in Boulder, Colo.

These observations are valuable as it helps scientists understand where the object came from. There has been some speculation that 1994 JR1 was once a quasi-satellite of Pluto. These new observations immediately dispel this idea.

Interestingly, using this series of observations, astronomers have been able to deduce the rate of the object's spin - and it's spinning fast. By monitoring the slight brightening and dimming of 1994 JR1, which corresponds to brightness changes on the object's surface as it rotates, it is spinning at a rate of once every 5.4 hours, which is "relatively fast" for a KBO, said New Horizons' John Spencer, also from SwRI.

"This is all part of the excitement of exploring new places and seeing things never seen before," he added.

It is hoped that, during its extended mission deep into the Kuiper belt, New Horizons might be able to make similar measurements of another 20 KBOs.

Having a robotic mission in the frozen badlands of the solar system is a historic opportunity. The Kuiper belt is the ancient shattered remains of our solar system's youth. By studying Pluto, its moons and the mysterious objects deep inside the Kuiper belt, we're turning back the pages of our star system's history books, giving us a privileged look into how the planets came to form and under what conditions our young sun grew up in.

A few decades ago, getting a spacecraft to another world was a feat in itself. We take it for granted today, and demand more -- images and videos and science data that will tell us more about how that world came to be. And luckily for us, usually spacecraft succeed in delivering that.
This week,

, showing us more surface detail on the dwarf planet. Click through to read more about Pluto and some other objects that got enhanced with spacecraft views, such as Mars, volcanic Io, and dwarf planet Ceres (complete with baffling bright spots).

Image: Pluto is getting big in the camera view of the New Horizons spacecraft, which will fly by the dwarf planet in July.

The first close-up view of Pluto is coming oh so soon; on July 14, the New Horizons spacecraft will whiz by the dwarf planet and its moons. What exactly is on its surface is a mystery. But looking at Pluto will give us a sense of what other icy objects far away in the solar system look like as well.
Long-range observations of Pluto over the years (done by the Hubble Space Telescope) show a mottled surface that changes as the dwarf planet rotates.

What the heck are those white things? On Ceres, a dwarf planet in our asteroid belt, the Hubble Space Telescope spotted the bright regions in images released in 2005. "The bright spot that appears in each image is a mystery. It is brighter than its surroundings. Yet it is still very dark, reflecting only a small portion of the sunlight that shines on it,"

of these spots -- yet astronomers remain puzzled. Are they ice? Are they salt? It will take more investigation to figure out what they are made of and how they arrived. As far as we know, NASA says, the phenomenon is unique in the solar system.

The first flybys of Mars happened to go by heavily cratered areas, leaving the impression that the planet looked a lot like the moon. The visions of life dancing in the public's heads faded, and the planet appeared a dead world until Mariner 9 did a global mission in 1971. From orbit, the NASA spacecraft spotted ancient volcanoes such as Olympus Mons and also discovered Valles Marineris, a vast canyon network stretching across most of the planet.

Today we are lucky to have high-resolution images of Mars beaming back every day, so we can look in more detail at changes to the planet over time. The 2004 Mars Express image of the caldera (volcanic craters) on Olympus Mons is the first high-resolution image of them, according to the European Space Agency.
The public also get involved through another Mars orbiter, NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter -- you can request photos of certain regions

how to get to Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. In 2003, the telescope pinned down the size and rotation period of the comet, and far-away measurements made it appear as though the comet was football-shaped.

Scientists and the public alike were enchanted in 2014 when Rosetta finally got close to the comet. An intriguing "rubber-duckie" shape emerged as pictures made it clear the comet is loosely held together at a joint. In November, the Philae spacecraft landed on the surface and got data for a few dozen hours there before hibernating; it just started re-communicating a few days ago.

When the Voyager spacecraft flew by Titan in the early 1980s, there was only so much the pair could see. That's because they could only take images in visible light; an orange haze obscured the surface, leaving Titan's features mostly a mystery for decades. Much like peering through Venus' shroud, it would require images in light human eyes can't see to ferret out more of Titan's mysteries.

Mercury, the planet closest to the sun, escaped close scrutiny for much of the space age. A single probe flew a few times past the planet in 1974-5 and provided tantalizing glimpses of its surface. But a complete global map, and an idea of its insides and atmosphere, would have to wait several more decades.

(Mercury Surface, Space Environment, Geochemistry and Ranging) mission at Mercury in April. Some of MESSENGER's major finds include strong evidence of water ice at the poles, a tenuous atmosphere that changes with the seasons, and evidence of old volcanic deposits.

In contrast to our quiet moon, Io is an extremely volcanic moon at Jupiter. When Voyager 1 flew by the moon in 1979, its mottled, pizza-like appearance caused a stir -- not to mention the fact that Voyager spotted an eruption during its brief time in Jupiter's system.

NASA's Galileo spacecraft followed up in the 1990s by taking global images of Io's surface and peering closely at the aftermath of explosions. Understanding how volcanoes work on Io can help us understand their processes more generally in the solar system.